Ghassan Abou-Alfa, MD, MBA

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center - USA

Ghassan Abou-Alfa joined the Gastrointestinal Oncology Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York back in 2001. Dr. Abou-Alfa specializes in the treatment of gastrointestinal cancers. Dr. Abou-Alfa received his medical degree from the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, and completed his post-doctoral training at Yale University School of Medicine. Dr. Abou-Alfa also earned his MBA from Columbia University. Dr. Abou-Alfa serves as the chair of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Task Force for Hepatobiliary Cancers, the chair of the AIDS Malignancy Consortium (AMC) Non-AIDS Defining Malignancies (NADC) Liver/GI Task Force, and is the President-Elect for the International Society of Gastrointestinal Oncology. Dr. Abou-Alfa has lectured worldwide on the subject on gastrointestinal malignancies. He serves as the chair of the medical board of the Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation and the Blue Faery Liver Foundation, and also serves on the National Medical Advisory Committee of the American Liver Foundation.

Dr. Abou-Alfa has also spearheaded many international projects since 2006, and now serves on the institutional leadership group for international healthcare. Dr. Abou-Alfa helped Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center establish a strong relationship with many institutions worldwide, with an ongoing faculty exchange, repeated video-link conferencing, and class-training course starting with the American University of Beirut, and now encompassing other institutions in the Middle East and China. These joint collaborations have led to the development of the first joint tissue bank with a shared database between Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and the American University of Beirut. The joint programs also offer supported fellowship opportunities for excelling medical graduates.